Eritrea:
Prominent journalist reported dead in secret prison
Fessahaye
Yohannes (known as "Joshua"), a journalist,
playwright, poet, father of three, and long-term prisoner
of conscience, is reported to be dead as a result of
severe ill-treatment and denial of medical care in a
secret prison in northern Eritrea.
Eritrea is a country closed to human rights investigators and while Amnesty
International is therefore unable to confirm by direct evidence the reports
of his death last month, it has assessed the reports as highly credible.
Since his arrest in 2001 and "disappearance" after a hunger strike
while in police custody in Asmara in April in 2002, the Eritrean government
has constantly refused to say where "Joshua" was detained and in
what conditions, despite intense international campaigning for his release
by Amnesty International and media organizations. All have called without success
on the Eritrean authorities to explain persistent reports of his death, and
also of the deaths of several other political detainees including three other
journalists who were held with him. The Eritrean government, defying international
concerns, tries to pass off all reports of human rights abuses as fabrications.
Forty-eight-year-old Fessahaye Yohannes, editor of the leading Setit newspaper
and a former volunteer Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) fighter before
independence, had been arrested in September 2001. At that time, former government
ministers who were members of the one-party parliament as well as former EPLF
leaders were detained and accused of treason. Ten leading independent journalists
were also arrested and accused of being "spies and mercenaries",
and all private media was shut down indefinitely. Hundreds of other arrests
also took place at this time, including of civil servants, former EPLF fighters,
business leaders, army conscripts and students. All those arrested were held
incommunicado in appalling conditions, without being taken to court or charged
with any offence. None had advocated violent opposition. Only a few out of
some hundreds have been released, often when they were dying.
The government ministers had criticised President Issayas Afewerki, who had
led the EPLF to win Eritrea's independence from Ethiopia in 1991, and demanded
democratic reforms guaranteed by the Constitution. They were prisoners of conscience
detained on account of the peaceful expression of their opinions. The private
media had published articles on the issue and gave the dissidents a platform.
Those detained politicians and journalists considered most threatening to President
Issayas Afewerki were later detained in a remote and makeshift building in
Embatkala near Dongolo, to the north of the capital of Asmara. Here, they were
kept in secret and guarded by a special army unit. These prisoners of conscience,
said to number over 60 in all, were occasionally allowed hospital treatment
in Asmara under military secrecy. In 2003 they were again apparently moved
to a more distant desert prison called Eiraeiro in the Red Sea Region where
there are no roads or habitations. Physical conditions there were worse, with
no possibility of medical treatment.
Fessahaye Yohannes reportedly died because he was denied medical treatment
during a long illness.
Amnesty International urgently calls on the Eritrean President to:
establish an impartial and independent judicial inquiry to investigate the
reported death of Fessahaye “Joshua” Yohannes and that of other
co-detainees who have also allegedly died, and to authorise it to visit the
Eiraeiro prison;
state publicly what has happened to Fessahaye Yohannes and other detainees;
if he is dead, return his body to his family for burial, and bring to justice
those responsible for any criminal actions or negligence resulting in his death;
if he is still alive, release him immediately and unconditionally, as a prisoner
of conscience who has not used or advocated violence.
